Overall feedback about game from arpg veteran standpoint

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Hi all,

just in case this reaches devs ears, thank you very much for your hard work. This game is shaping to be real contender to PoE and Diablo which probably makes many people very happy! Any suggestions below are coming from player with over 10000 hours in Diablo3 and PoE alone not counting other arpgs like Grim Dawn, Wolcen, Tourchlight or older Diablos so not everything might be suited well for casual player. Now, enough with introductions and to the point.

  1. Current Endgame - Arena / Monolith
  2. Gameplay - Skills / Classes
  3. Misc
  1. Monolith - i assume the idea was to create similar endgame experience to D3 rifts or PoE atlas with monolith as its “base”. Currently monolith are taking too long to get you to the “good stuff” which are the bosses and the completion of timeline reward. Normal non-quest monolith at the moment is just boring and repetitive rush to complete the objective and get out as soon as possible. The fact that you need 20-30 of those just to complete timeline is just adding to the problem. Cut the amount required for quest echo by significant amount and in compensation add multiple objectives in echo to complete for more variety.

Random map generator for monolith layouts will also improve greatly replayability - i honestly was suprised to see this is not the case in monoliths as this is pretty much standard in any other game. It adds to the diversification of experience even if you run the same base map but with slightly altered layout it plays much differently than running from A to B with most of your interest on other screen since you know exactly where to go.

Density - while i understand that philosophy is much different than PoE or Diablo where you zoom through hundreds of mobs, some of the monoliths have just abysmal density, you can run sometimes for 20-30sec and encounter maybe 10 white mobs and nothing more eg. Ice Caves layout.

Arena - most of the map layouts in arena are just too big for the amount of mobs spawned. They can be easly half the size and will greatly improve the sense of actual challenge where you get hit from all the sides if you arent prepared and didnt position yourself well.

Arena checkpoints - while addition of the lvl90 key was move in the right direction, its still not enough. The simplest and best solution for arenas to not be a few hours journey if you are pushing for ladder is simple checkpoint like every 100 or 50 waves. Remove the 90lvl start key and let us pick the wave we can start at bases on this checkpoints each time we enter the arena. Challenge should come from increasing difficulty, not from “will i have enough time to push far enough?”.

  1. Base movement speed of characters - While i understand that rouge is the speedy girl, supposed to be quick on feet compared to other classes, the rest feels just too slow. Base movement speed in such large layouts (especially in those empty monoliths) feels way too low. Its way, way, WAY worse when you enter monolith with mobs chilling you and you can move literaly from your movement skill CD to movement skill CD. I would suggest either increasing movement speed bonuses on boots on all tiers or simply increase base movement speed.

Skills interactions - skills procing other skills - here is some design inconsistency that i just dont understand and might be missing a point but eg. shadow cascade + synchronized strike interaction, why was it nerfed? You clearly wanted people to use synchronized strike as initiator for high burst aoe shadow cascades, this playstyle is completly imposible now even with 4 idols for mana efficiency. You need to run mana generator for the build to work where you are dependant on shadows that disapear after few seconds. This makes for awful gameplay that just doesnt add up in the end. You could have just nerfed the damage of cascade when casted from synchronized strike to compensate the big aoe it could do.

Another example is disintegrate + lightning blast, why would i ever use disintegrate as main source of damage if i can take the no-mana cost node + defensive nodes and focus on scaling lightning blast which does more damage then any disintegrate setup and to proc it via disintegrate i just use 4 mastery points?

Mana - i understand the philosophy behind the mana costs of some skills but not all classes should have mana issues. At the moment every build you do the first question is how do i get this to be actually viable mana wise - while sorcerer, druid or even paladin should very much be mana hungry, why does the quick and jumpy rogue or tanky boi forge guard or even our lovely melee mage spellblade should be so heavly taxed on mana if some of them barely got any way to recover it or way that just breaks your gameplay. Eg forge strike is completly imposible to play as main strike (non-minion) skill, doesnt matter how much you try.

Also mana should definately be suffix instead of prefix. It really makes no sense why it is prefix for any class other than mage.

  1. Misc - any crafting reagent should be on autopick up like gold or health poitions directly to the forge. It makes no sense to have tons of them in bag just to press one button in your inventory to send them to forge.

DPS tooltip - currently to the best of my knowledge its imposible to check what portion of your damage is in alignments you do and what part in your main skill or even just what is the current critical strike rate for the skill. Definately needs improvements and more depth.

Mastery respecialization - you already have 5 different classes which makes you go through leveling 5 times, its more than enough for avarage player, forcing someone who likes to try out new things to level 15 times where 10 of those are on thesame character is poor decision. Eg. is myself in this case i leveled up sentiel to try warpath, i mastered it into forge guard thinking i can go with some tankiness as melee, turns out the damage is extreemly low and i want to try out void knight instead. Now i have to level up exacly thesame character with thesame skills but different mastery, this isnt fun and honestly pushes me personaly out of trying new stuff.

Thesame stands of losing XP when you respec your skills, why would you punish player for trying new stuff? If i change my skills i need to get to monolith or arena on subpar half-assed build and run multiple runs of those just to get xp to get my real build going, this is just waste of time that serves no purpose.

If anyone survived till this point, thank you for reading and have a great day/night ! Cheers !

8 Likes
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While you raise some good points, there is still a bit left to discuss / comment on :slight_smile:

  1. Monolith (…)

Feedback is always useful, but know that the endgame is constantly worked on.

Base movement speed of characters

is on average a bit slow to my taste, too. I suggest experimenting with classes other than rogue, though - they can be made very fast, too, and it is also okay to have faster and slower builds.

Skills interactions and mana

Strong skills obviously feel great to use, but they need a drawback to balance them - with other options being cooldowns or setup requirements. Mana costs are actually the mildest, because they allow for a burst damage and in LE you can go even go into negatives. If a skill seems to cost too much mana, a better complaint may be that it is too weak. Reducing the damage or AoE will eventually result in everything playing the same.

I recently played with synchronized strike and shadow cascade and did not have mana issues. Are you sure you did not take too many + mana cost nodes? Do not hope that you can get away with it and spam the combo endlessly. Most skills let you choose between cost efficiency and damage efficiency. That is great!

Mastery respecialization

ARPGs are about improving your character. Playing the game is the goal in itself. If you could change specialization and skills freely and once trading is possible, you would be able to try everything in a couple of hours and be done with the game.

There is no sense of accomplishment when no effort is made.

That aside, some cost for skill respec is needed to avoid skill swapping e.g. for boss levels, which is considered undesirable.

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Because it was self-sustaining, which is simply too strong.

Seems like “impossible” is very subjective, since that’s still one of the strongest Rogue builds.

If you use Disintegrate as a vehicle to trigger LB, you can’t scale it via cast speed, since the node that triggers LB has a fixed rate.

With low investment this is the best choice, but that kind of build can go very different directions.

Also Disintegrate as main dmg skill is totally viable and super strong.

There waaaay more skills, even in the base class than you can use at the same time. Of course you can play very similar builds, but you also can try different builds from the get-go.

For me, the Mastery being not respectable is the bare minimum that should have a weight for your choices.
Respeccing is incredible easy in LE, too easy for my taste (I preferred some of the older implementations, where Respeccing was harder)

Taking away the weight of the mastery choice would not be enjoyful for me at all.

4 Likes
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I’m sorry but I disagree, this actually makes me want to play the game more as I can try a different build each time I do something, limiting what I can do just kills the game for me, levelling is already bad atm and is one of the worst things to do after the first time, its tedious and quite frankly boring. Having to make 3 characters of the same class just to try new things is ridiculous and is what will make me be done with the game, making the one class be able to swap between all 3 specs will keep me in the game longer. Just my two cents :slight_smile:

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Monolith - while yes of course after all its beta only, but only info we got so far is that there will be new endgame systems, nothing about changes to monolith that is why i mentioned it.

Base movement speed - could you please give me specific example? I tried every class by now and i honestly did feel like any class other than rouge and maybe lich in reaper form with 2 dashes did not have any decent movement skills/speed. I am really interested if i missed something maybe?

Respecing - you bring up viable points but i still dont think limiting player in choice gated with starting over from zero is good thing. Every successfull aRPG gives you ability to change your character as you wish, i dont think forcing other way in LE will be good in long run. You can even heavly tax the decision to swap mastery like losing few levels or using high numbers of crafting materials, it does not need to be free. Especially since going to lvl 100 is high time investment

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Shadow cascade - could you please show me setup that makes it viable? I might have missed it or simply didnt find out the idea behind it. Thesame for disintegrate i really tried hard to make it work without LB but you either end up with not enough mana for longer channel or not enough dmg to be worth playing, am i missing something?

Respeccing - this is thesame point i made in post above, a minute ago. You can add the weight to it by big respec costs. Limiting player choices is never good, PoE Diablo3/2 all successfull and allow any kind of resepc you want, no game except Grim Dawn artifically locks you with chosen specialization for class. You cant tell me getting 8 ascendancy points in PoE doesnt have weight to it just because you can respec it?

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levelling is already bad atm and is one of the worst things to do after the first time, its tedious and quite frankly boring

Haha, that’s the description of monoliths in their current state for me! Speaking of which:

On the topic of:

Respecing - (…) i still dont think limiting player in choice gated with starting over from zero is good thing

Skills have minimum level that is high enough to see how they work. Surely they will be weak and incomplete, but that’s the point I raised about necessity of progression. If your skills are already capped, you obviously will spend less time on using (/testing) them, no?

I believe that a character at lvl 90+ is finished anyway and you should move to a new one, not just respec it. I wouldn’t be surprised about changing specialization becoming available later on, but even PoE does not let you change your base class (and changing ascendancy requires some effort), so that is why I genuinely asked how far would you like to go with it?

I like it the way it is, so at least I wanted my opinion to be heard, too.

Changing topic to shadow cascade, I got my build only to level 65 and went with something else, so I don’t want to comment too much, but I have found this topic. Maybe you can post for an advice there?

Base movement speed - could you please give me specific example?

  • Perma-haste maelstrom via warcry druid
  • Spellblade tele + surge
  • Sentinel Warpath + double dash
  • Reaper you included yourself
    Note that devs are consciously against ‘zoom zoom’ builds. If you are looking for PoE game speed, LE is not that.
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Thank you for the link to shadow cascade build, this actually proves my point from the post i made. They nerfed procing of shadow cascade with synchronized strike so people just create shadows with synchro while procing cascade with other skill (shift). That is actually way different build dont you think? It just reinforces what i wrote before, too big nerf caused shift to other skill with similar mechanic and much worse gameplay. If this goes like that until end of beta, all skills will require multiple cheese mechanic setups just to get effective enough result to enjoy the game…

" As we’ve previously hinted, Patch 0.8.2 will focus heavily on endgame content. Today we’re excited to unveil our most complex boss to-date! The Shade of Orobyss is a particularly unpredictable nemesis that appears in a number of distinct forms with differing abilities. The revamped and expanded Monolith of Fate contains many additional types of Echo, with new rewards awaiting those brave enough to venture inside them. New objectives, new bosses, new types of content, and new meta pro…" this is great, thank you for bringing that up. What worries me is this line “Monolith of Fate contains many additional types of Echo” this seems like more of copy paste layouts from campaign and while it adds to variety, it still will get stale after few days of running unless layouts are altered when you enter them. Guess we will see soon enough, hoping for the best!

1 Like
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Oh, man…I fully agree with you!
just wanted to add my point - I personally hate playing the Rogue class where I don’t have any of the “zero mana” AOE abilities for BOW… what the hell is going on?
Why can other melee classes use AOE attacks with “zero mana” skills but bow attacks can’t?

The game offer you to get more attack speed passives…but my mana’s lost after 1-2 seconds… and then I must play “Flurry” with SINGLE hits versus packs of monsters??? WTF?

and I forgot to mention about the Crafting system…
For example - my level is 24 and have a lvl 20 item … and it went to 28 requirement. Amazing!

10

The endgame is currently simply what it can be, it still being beta. It’s a reusage of storyline content wrapped in something already quite decent, imho. The storyline is not finished yet - I’m betting this is where 11th’s resources will first focus on, with some endgame alterations in mind. They probably won’t go with random tilesets before the story is finished.

And all the builds/skills will be tuned and even revamped, I’m sure. Rogue will still get the Falconer class and since you can invest points in all 3 tier classes this will probably change all the rogue builds again.

As for having to make a new character - I can only suggest working on your twink gear to hasten up the process. I don’t mind not being able to respec the mastery class - though I’d wish the respeccing of skills would be slightly more forgiving. Perhaps upping the level of free points a bit (the one that goes up as your character reaches higher level).

The note that the start of monoliths are a bit of a walkthrough seems a recurring point in the feedback of many and I agree on that one (I concluded the same in an earlier post too).

11

Would you care to list some of the ones that do? Diablo 1, 2 & 3 don’t, nor do PoE or Grim Dawn.

1 Like
12

That is actually way different build dont you think?

I do think so, but your post did not include a build! I was happy using shift for cascade (explains why mana issues were no problem to me). A skill can’t be perfect for every build, but if a skill legitimately never works, a change is welcome. If a single build does not work though, then it is time for build adjustments.

Why can other melee classes use AOE attacks with “zero mana” skills but bow attacks can’t

You don’t have to engage, so ranged AoE is inherently more powerful and requires some balancing - be it mana, damage or radius.
Also, Cinderstrike?

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Puncture & Cinder Strike are zero cost, Detonating Arrow has a cost of 8 which is fairly low. The only expensive AoE bow skill is Hail of Arrows which has a cost of 60 (by default) so it’s not meant to be spammed.

That’s a bug, not intended.

14

oh…yes! Puncture… 1 arrow
Cinder strike… small AOE + 1 arrow + 1 arrow and again the small aoe attack
For example when we start to play POE we have tons of AOE gems for the Ranger class. Those skills cost some mana but it isn’t problem to use mana potions
But in LE we don’t have AOE skills before the mastery…why?

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PoE is not a good example for what’s reasonable AoE. PoE has screen clearing melee skills not to mention the offscreen clearing ranged skills. If PoE is your standard for “reasonable” AoE then yes, you’re not going to be happy with LE’s take on it.

Just because you don’t like a thing doesn’t make it not that thing. You need to use the tools the game gives you to deal with the situations the game throws at you. So with Puncture you can group mobs up then hit them once or twice & the pack will die, if the default area isn’t big enough for you you can take the Penumbral Ambus node to significantly increase the area hit at a not insignificant mana cost.

3 Likes
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I think we missunderstood each other cause if you played those games you obviously would know? What i meant is: Diablo 3 - you can change your skills as you wish // PoE - you can change your ascendancy with regrets and lab run // Diablo 2 - you could respec with a1 quest and item

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And you can change your skills in LE, you just can’t change your mastered class nor your base class (as in D3). True you can change your ascendancy in PoE but you can’t change your class. Every aRPG imposes limits on you, you usually can’t change a class once you’ve chosen it. LE isn’t much different to those others (other than PoE where you can change your ascendancy).

18

ok but… I just can’t understand the main idea or the fundamentals of the Ranger in LE ( and I play this class in other games )

we have Shift - 25 mana cost
Acid Flask - 10 mana , Smoke bomb - 21 mana
Decoy - 40mana, Ballista - 44 mana…

and nothing for the BOW…what the hell? why is it so?
Why doesn’t the Flurry have some passives like “3 shot in a cone instead of a sequent attacks”? … or just like Rain of Arrow skill for bow…
When we start playing we have sword… and after we found the bow! … but attacks are absolutely afwul for bows… I can’t play my favorite class becouse of it
And worse I don’t understand why the developers make it
Don’t give a good bow skill for players… it’s almost like not to let the mage to cast AOE attacks or mele classes deal AOE damage

19

Flurry has a node that makes it cast Multishot every 4th arrow.

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Ah so we did missunderstood each other afterall. Im sorry but i cant agree with you, can you image playing d3 and not have acess to 3-4 skills or few specializations in skill unless you level up new character? Or having to level up your character again if you want to change ascendancy? Even 20y old game like D2 implemented respec ability in late patches as there was high demand on it.
Dont compare mastery to whole class, im not asking to respect from druid to sorcerer, im asking to respec from druid to beastmaster for example. Its much different. Mastery is exacly thesame concept as ascendancy in PoE

1 Like